Ana Urzua of Santa Ana Building Healthy Communities speaks during a rally outside of Santa Ana City Hall in Santa Ana on Tuesday afternoon, April 3, 2018, to protest high rents in the city. Citizens groups filed paperwork Tuesday with the Santa Ana city clerk to launch a signature-gathering campaign to get a rent control initiative on the November ballot. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Jonathan Bibriesca, a social worker from Santa Ana speaks during a rally outside of Santa Ana City Hall in Santa Ana on Tuesday afternoon, April 3, 2018, to protest high rents in the city. Citizens groups are filing paperwork Tuesday with the Santa Ana city clerk to launch a signature-gathering campaign to get a rent control initiative on the November ballot. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Juan Carlos Macedo, 53, of Santa Ana joins a rally of rent control supporters outside Santa Ana City Hall Tuesday, April 3. Activists say rising rents, gentrification and tenant displacement justify their effort to get rent control and “just cause eviction” protections on the city’s November ballot. (Photo by Jeff Collins, Orange County Register/SCNG)

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Citizens groups holds a rally outside of Santa Ana City Hall in Santa Ana on Tuesday afternoon, April 3, 2018, to protest high rents in the city. Citizens groups are filing paperwork Tuesday with the Santa Ana city clerk to launch a signature-gathering campaign to get a rent control initiative on the November ballot. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Reyna Mendoza, 38, of Santa Ana sports a “Rent is too damn high” T-shirt during a rally at Santa Ana City Hall on Tuesday, April 3, to support rent control. Her sign says in Spanish, “I don’t want to live just to pay the rent.” Citizen groups filed paperwork to launch a petition drive to get rent control on Santa Ana’s November ballot. (Photo by Jeff Collins, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Santa Ana Assistant City Clerk Norma Mitre time-stamps paperwork citizen groups filed Tuesday, April 3, seeking to launch a petition drive to get rent control before Santa Ana voters in November. Supporters need to gather 12,000 to 13,000 signatures by Aug. 10 for the initiative to qualify for the ballot. (Photo by Jeff Collins, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Jonathan Bibriesca, a social worker from Santa Ana speaks during a rally outside of Santa Ana City Hall in Santa Ana on Tuesday afternoon, April 3, 2018, to protest high rents in the city. Citizens groups are filing paperwork Tuesday with the Santa Ana city clerk to launch a signature-gathering campaign to get a rent control initiative on the November ballot. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Ana Urzua of Santa Ana Building Healthy Communities speaks during a rally outside of Santa Ana City Hall in Santa Ana on Tuesday afternoon, April 3, 2018, to protest high rents in the city. Citizens groups are filing paperwork Tuesday with the Santa Ana city clerk to launch a signature-gathering campaign to get a rent control initiative on the November ballot. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Ana Urzua of Santa Ana Building Healthy Communities speaks during a rally outside of Santa Ana City Hall in Santa Ana on Tuesday afternoon, April 3, 2018, to protest high rents in the city. Citizens groups are filing paperwork Tuesday with the Santa Ana city clerk to launch a signature-gathering campaign to get a rent control initiative on the November ballot. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Citizens groups holds a rally outside of Santa Ana City Hall in Santa Ana on Tuesday afternoon, April 3, 2018, to protest high rents in the city. Citizens groups are filing paperwork Tuesday with the Santa Ana city clerk to launch a signature-gathering campaign to get a rent control initiative on the November ballot. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Moises Vazquez, 37, a community organizer with Latino Health Access, one of 11 local citizen groups backing a rent control petition drive seeking to qualify limits on rent hikes for the November election. The proposed measure would limit increases to the inflation rate or 5 percent, whichever is smaller. (Photo by Jeff Collins, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Ana Urzua of Santa Ana Building Healthy Communities speaks during a rally outside of Santa Ana City Hall in Santa Ana on Tuesday afternoon, April 3, 2018, to protest high rents in the city. Citizens groups filed paperwork Tuesday with the Santa Ana city clerk to launch a signature-gathering campaign to get a rent control initiative on the November ballot. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Most council members were non-committal at the meeting on whether to support rent control. But organizer Hairo Cortez told a gathering of about 30 to 40 supporters outside City Hall Tuesday the council is refusing to act.

“If our leaders aren’t going to act, we are,” said Cortez, executive director of Chispa, a Latino activist group. “People are tired of having to choose between food, health care and a decent home.”

Tommy Thompson, Southern California representative of the California Apartment Association, said his group will “strongly oppose this effort every step of the way.” He also called the proposed petition drive premature since the city still is looking for solutions.

“The tenant activists are looking to force a very bad housing policy on a good city,” Thompson said. “Rent control would only make the housing crisis in Santa Ana worse.”

The proposed “Community Preservation, Rent Stabilization and Renters’ Rights Act” would limit annual rent hikes to the rate of inflation or 5 percent, whichever is lower.

The initiative also would enact “just cause eviction” requirements, eliminating a landlord’s right to issue move-out notices to tenants without cause.

A Public Law Center attorney representing the pro-rent control coalition said the city will take about two weeks to review the petition drive, with signature gathering likely to begin in early May. Supporters need to get at least 12,000 or 13,000 qualified voter signatures – 10 percent of the registered voters – by Aug. 10.

“Unregulated profits in the housing industry is only a formula for more people on the streets,” Ana Urzua of Santa Ana Building Healthy Communities told the press conference.

Nicholas Dunlap, a past president of the Apartment Association of Orange County, said he was perplexed because city efforts are just beginning.

“Now is not the time to be short-sighted,” Dunlap said. “Let’s sit down, evaluate needs and look at numbers to truly understand what is driving today’s affordability issues. Decades and decades of under-building … are behind this.”

For more than a decade, Jeff Collins has followed housing and real estate, covering market booms and busts and all aspects of the real estate industry. He has been tracking rents and home prices, and has explored solutions to critical problems such as Southern California’s housing shortage and affordability crisis. Before joining the Orange County Register in 1990, he covered a wide range of topics for daily newspapers in Kansas, El Paso and Dallas. A Southern California native, he studied at UC Santa Barbara and UC Irvine. He later earned a master’s degree from the USC School of Journalism.

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